Re: Error in decimal places?

Charles Russell <NOSPAM@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Back in the sixties, fortran was touted as "natural language" for
scientists and mathematicians. And it was, more or less.

If you are seriously suggesting, as seems to be implied, that people
won't have to learn the rules of the language, but can just write
"naturally" and all will work out, then... well...

Let me just say that it wasn't so then, it isn't so now, and it isn't
likely to be so in the reasonably forseable future. I was programming in
Fortran in the 60's - at least the last few years of them, and I
remember. If you think it was otherwise, the rose tinting in the glasses
must be a bit heavy.

In fact, I remember there being an awful lot of arcane special-case
restrictions to memorize. Many of those are gone now. For example, one
had to memorize that it was ok to write n-1, but not 1-n, or for that
matter 2-1. Those who don't imediately recognize the context of those
particular restrictions probably either didn't program in those days or
have forgotten.

As to what was touted... well... that's a completely different matter
than what was true. Isn't that usually the case with "touts"?

--
Richard Maine | Good judgement comes from experience;
email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgement.
domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: OT: RAN - Movie recommendation...
    ... boring and I never bothered to memorize the whole thing. ... Here's Goran playing it..... ... The other day I was drinking coffee and my ... in the air force in the mid-80's programming that piece as a basic ...
    (rec.music.classical.guitar)
  • Re: The Culture Wars Go to High School
    ... > MA> come across as worse than ignorant. ... > Whereas for computer science, for programming, and for hackery, if you ... Anyone who needs to memorize them is in trouble. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.fandom)
  • Re: 16/32 bit processor for OS development
    ... and everyday use within the programming world. ... fully analogue, fully digital, or a CPU and code, is of no interest. ... The contents are a matter of economics and pragmatism. ... product to gloss over your memory leak. ...
    (comp.arch.embedded)
  • Re: Iteration in lisp
    ... style of programming, I have found them to be quite useful ... constructs are therefore "just an argument about trivial syntax". ... inherently create tangles of dataflow that compilers could not sort ... purely a matter of syntax, or whether it was a matter of capability. ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: dated/failed predictions
    ... silently in my white robes, glowing (with the help of lots of hidden ... And to have been programming in all programming ... As a dour Scot, you believe in predestination, right? ... I'll get one no matter what I do. ...
    (rec.arts.sf.written)